Mantra of Solace: Aegis removed.

[Vidit.7108]

Losing aegis from mantra of solace sucks. I was however expecting a lot worse. FWIW Guardian/Firebrand can still provide pretty good 5-person aegis by using Advance! and in combination with Tome 3-5 + shield 4, you may not notice that much a difference.

Except of course those two other utilities are highly competitive already. FB still dominates the stab game and now it's easier to be the sole provider of protection and resolution. I think that helps it support with Specter and Mechanist better than it would have before. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Vidit.7108

[Carnifex.3275]

3 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Firebrand is litterally one of the most broken speccs in the game, how did you think it wouldn't get nerfed?

 

This is exactly the type of thinking that's wrong and causes so much damage over time and sadly anet is doing just that. You see.. instead of nerfing and dumbing everything down why not try to improve other classes? Instead of shaving off aegis from FB why not instead give something to warrior/revenant/druid etc so they would be more versatile and overall stronger and fun? You can think of it this way "FB is strong let's shave it down" or you can think of it this way "FB is quite amazing and fun, why don't we do something about Thief, Warrior, Necro etc. that would put them on the same level in terms of support/dps/versatility?" Look at HoT/PoF launches. And look at how much classes have changed, is that what's the goal here? Just shave off everything and move onto the next spec/xpac? But i think we all know why instead of tweaking underperforming classes anet chooses to shave down classes. It's just easier, less work. And no one can do anything about it. Some people will take a break, some people will move onto other specs, "flavor of the xpac" specs. It would be interesting to see statistics how players migrate from one class to the other. I'm sure there's gonna be quite a migration, "alts" will rise into "mains".

PS. I didn't mention PvP/WvW. Imagine how this Aegis change will affect those game modes.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Hotride.2187]

1 hour ago, Daddy.8125 said:

But no proffession should monopolise stab aegis and Quickness in a single build. 

And that has changed how exactly by the change?

1 hour ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Firebrand is litterally one of the most broken speccs in the game, how did you think it wouldn't get nerfed?

I expected fb will be nerfed (more than it was) and other professions will be buffed to cover for the nerfs. Now I'm still expected to cover everything of the above boons in a fractal run (and heal), with less tools. At most it might make playing hfb slightly more interesting (from 0 brain to 0.001 brain gameplay).

But as usual the devs in the game make a half-assed effort to fix something, either due to lack of time or due to lack of something else (vision? foresight? knowledge of their own game?). And then you have to sit for an year playing the result.

To make no mention of wvw or spvp, one of which is "a cornerstone of the game" (and fb is, believe it or not, a cornerstone of wvw). Where the change makes literally no sense, along with the other recent mantra changes they've made.

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Dave.6819 said:

This is exactly the type of thinking that's wrong and causes so much damage over time and sadly anet is doing just that. You see.. instead of nerfing and dumbing everything down why not try to improve other classes

Because of power creep. If you repeatively surge proffessions forwards continously you trivalise the games content due to overpowered speccs. 

Dumbing down? Lol. No, the power creep was dumbing the game down. 

1 hour ago, Dave.6819 said:

You can think of it this way "FB is strong let's shave it down" or you can think of it this way "FB is quite amazing and fun, why don't we do something about Thief, Warrior, Necro etc. that would put them on the same level in terms of support/dps/versatility

Power creep is not healthy for the game. Lol. Honestly how can you not see this problem? 

Your argument is backwards. 

The power creep is what is damaging the game. Bringing speccs down is reversing that damage. 

You can't just want everything buffed again and again. That's ridiculous. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, Hotride.2187 said:

that has changed how exactly by the change

Didn't say it had. What I stated was it shouldnt I have tried FB after its changes to see if this has changed. 

[Carnifex.3275]

1 hour ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Because of power creep. If you repeatively surge proffessions forwards continously you trivalise the games content due to overpowered speccs. 

Dumbing down? Lol. No, the power creep was dumbing the game down. 

Power creep is not healthy for the game. Lol. Honestly how can you not see this problem? 

Your argument is backwards. 

The power creep is what is damaging the game. Bringing speccs down is reversing that damage. 

You can't just want everything buffed again and again. That's ridiculous. 

I don't want them to constantly get buffed. I want them not to get nerfed in a sense that it dumbs down the profession mechanics. If you nerf some profession it's inevitable that you'll have to nerf other ones in the future. After that you'll be nerfing it again. After half a year again.. and again.. and what's the result? Dumbed down professions that aren't even the same as they were during the expansion. I'm not saying you need to buff and buff everyone. I'm saying you need to level it out and stop when the right balance is achieved. If powercreep is an issue just scale down the damage/healing, not a problem, like it was done in pvp. There are plenty of other ways how to fight the powercreep. But dumbing down profession mechanics is not the way. I wasnt talking about how powercreep is dumbing down the game. I was talking that constant nerfing just makes classes dull, less interesting and just uninspiring. And more and more nerfing leads to even more nerfing. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Puck.3697]

15 minutes ago, Dave.6819 said:

I don't want them to constantly get buffed. I want them not to get nerfed in a sense that it dumbs down the profession mechanics. I

i disagree, Firebrands Mechanics Dumbed down. being Overpowered is a Nartural Dumbing down of content.

15 minutes ago, Dave.6819 said:

Dumbed down professions that aren't even the same as they were during the expansion.

im confused to how u think it dumbs down a proffession but it does not.

Nerfing a Proffession to a More balanced state demands the proffession to be played closer to its Potiental to achieve results as with a overpowered proffession u can headbutt ur keyboard on repeat and Win down to sheer power creep.

15 minutes ago, Dave.6819 said:

I wasnt talking about how powercreep is dumbing down the game. I was talking that constant nerfing just makes classes dull, less interesting and just uninspiring. And more and more nerfing leads to even more nerfing. 

The entire creation of Firebrand was Uninspiring

"How do we make Content So Faceroll nobody can fail it.. .while simultaniously Uniting over half the players in one proffession" aaah firebrand.

maybe i'd agree if this was 1 or 2 outliers beneath firebrand. Just buff the 2 up to the bar. but when its Every other proffession like seriously, theres a problem. buffing 33 Elite Speccs around 3 Elites is a Disaster awaiting to happen. you cant Just buff 33 Elites and hope they land close. its entirely illogical to expect that to be good.

Specc is broken levels Overpowered. Trivalises content. Makes all content easier by sheer existance.

no proffession. should ever even be 80% of what firebrand was. its Unhealthy for the game for a Specc to be that strong.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[zealex.9410]

16 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

It was disgustingly busted in pve.

lmfao getting confused emojis on this, were ppl that high on firebrand?

[Puck.3697]

1 hour ago, zealex.9410 said:

lmfao getting confused emojis on this, were ppl that high on firebrand?

People who main proffessions dont like  to admit they're main was Overpowered common trends im afraid everyone deep down knows how Overpowered it was regardless.

they just like to dress it up as "everything else was Underpowered"

[Infusion.7149]

In fractals yesterday I had two firebrands that didn't swap the heal out and decided to facetank damage. Needless to say bad habits needed to be broken and I reminded them of the changes implemented as they downed several times over the course of T4s.

[Carnifex.3275]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

In fractals yesterday I had two firebrands that didn't swap the heal out and decided to facetank damage. Needless to say bad habits needed to be broken and I reminded them of the changes implemented as they downed several times over the course of T4s.

Yeah we ran T4 today... holy hell it was stressful. Simple T4s felt like CMs. To those who said "Aegis is not that impactful, protection and resolution is quite good"... yeah. No. It's very impactful. Meta will have to change, we're not touching T4s or T4 CMs with HFB as a solo healer. Anet succeeded in changing the meta. It seems such a minor change .. like simple Aegis removal shouldn't be so impactful. But omg it was totally a different experience, ppl kept wiping even though our HFB was topnotch player. 

@Daddy.8125 Can you understand what i'm saying at all? I'm not pretending that other specs are underpowered or am i biased towards FB, just check history of anets balance patch notes. Anet shaved them off over the course of 2-3 years. And now they're underperforming. Even FB is underperforming compared to how it was in the beginning. So maybe it's time to quit nerfing and attack this problem from different angle. Nerfing leads to more nerfing and it's a non-stop cycle. Class A gets a nerf, so class B has to get nerfed cuz it's overpowered compared to class A. Class C also has to get nerfed so it's not too overpowered compared to class A and B. And so on.. Sure you can say FB is overpowered now. But only because many classes were nerfed heavily in the past and in comparison it seems overpowered. And FB is strong not necessarily cuz of less nerfs but just because of how the class is designed. Some classes can take some heavy nerfs and still stay relevant. Just look through the history of patch notes, juding on those every class is underperforming. So you can either keep on nerfing.. or maybe stop that and buff some classes or think of some other ways to balance things out.

Personally i don't even care. I'll just roll another class and play it. All i'm saying is that it's such an annoying way of dealing with it. People build their mains, invest time and money and then those mains become 20% of what they were. Same thing will happen over and over.. They give you a shiny new toy to play with and then they take it away and say "Here's a new shiny toy. Forget the old toy.."

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dave.6819

[cat.8975]

Oh no, you might need to dodge/sidestep big attacks again. How terrible.

As someone with over 6k hours on Guard this change is fine. I would've preferred to see a way to get the aegis back via trait choices (something like forcing you to pick between aegis, quickness, or damage), but I've had no issues on cfb or cele hb in PvE.

Where this change DOES suck is WvW. Maybe it's time they up the heal amount and/or share some of the heal with allies now that you can't heal them w/ the aegis. (As for PvP, it's an irrelevant change, as FB was already irrelevant there lol.)

[Infusion.7149]

@Dave.6819
Well it is a return to before firebrand was common. The nerf was harsh due to the lack of addition of heal back onto the skill IMO, whereas mantra of solace aegis sharing nerf is positive because you are still able to take "Advance" and shield for Shield of judgment , if not mace as in WVW (Protector's Strike as of 2016 patch until today). In Deimos CM for example you would stack "Advance". Without such a nerf harbinger and catalyst would likely never see any play similar to StM chrono (ramp time is not ideal for fractals) or quick scrapper (power isn't favored right now) which both don't have shared fury.
I didn't down when the firebrands down because since chrono+druid meta and in core days we had no quickness boons nor this amount of aegis. We still were able to complete fractals. It does penalize any power renegade heavily (to the tune of 33% crit) though, since you need to sidestep or jump and not dodge if possible. Instead of the craziness of suggesting that it have shared aegis returned the proper suggestion would probably be to make the heal on par with Signet of Resolve if you use all 3 charges which means double ammo cooldown and double base heal probably (1478*3=4434 over 12s ammo charge which is 369/ second without healing power , Signet of Resolve is 8150 over 30s base cooldown = 272 /second without healing power , "Receive the Light" is 30 second base cooldown and about 5850 or 195/second self heal with ~5K or 174/second for 4 party members). 

[Carnifex.3275]

@Infusion.7149 Ppl will probably switch back to Druid+qFB/chrono for fracts. It will all just depend who can bring the most DPS as possible together with quickness, i guess qcfb will suffice. Probably no place for alac or just very limited alac. Or some new spec variant. Idk how new specs work so no idea on that. I just heard that mechanists are good at healing. I'll personally switch back to just being dps, cbb with all this support meta change.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Dave.6819

[anbujackson.9564]

12 hours ago, Dave.6819 said:

Exactly. I always compare how classes were at the start of HoT/PoF and how they are now. It just sucks out the joy with that kind of balancing strategy. Making specs less appealing is definitely not a wise way to go.

I am sorry but do you even think before you write? Specs were incredibly broken at launch. For example firebrand and scourge, so disgusting even, that the nerfs were coming fast. And we are comparing now to this level of bs?

Anyway: the free protection and resolution is basically spamable 33% damage reduction for all damage. Take advance as utility since firebrand is pretty flexible anyway and use f3 5 in emergencies. Still plenty of aegis with barely any investment. Now compare that to chrono and we talk again. Not to mention the other specs who cant share aegis at all.

[anbujackson.9564]

16 minutes ago, Dave.6819 said:

@Infusion.7149 Ppl will probably switch back to Druid+qFB/chrono for fracts. It will all just depend who can bring the most DPS as possible together with quickness, i guess qcfb will suffice. Probably no place for alac or just very limited alac. Or some new spec variant. Idk how new specs work so no idea on that. I just heard that mechanists are good at healing. I'll personally switch back to just being dps, cbb with all this support meta change.

Why would they ever take druid or chrono again if firebrand and renegade are still omegagood? What exactly changed? Because of freaking aegis? Come on man... Renegade is basically unchanged, firebrand needs to "adapt" a bit.  Heal firebrand is even stronger now.

Might as well remove aegis alltogether, so people learn to play the game again. This is just sad.

Edited March 1, 2022 by anbujackson.9564

[ArchonWing.9480]

5 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

In fractals yesterday I had two firebrands that didn't swap the heal out and decided to facetank damage. Needless to say bad habits needed to be broken and I reminded them of the changes implemented as they downed several times over the course of T4s.

Well you still need to keep the heal to upkeep quickness and proc  the protection symbol I think?

Edited March 1, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Legend of Rogue.5394]

On 2/28/2022 at 1:44 PM, zealex.9410 said:

It was disgustingly busted in pve.

Who cares about PVE??? It literally does nothing bad for the game

[Infusion.7149]

48 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Well you still need to keep the heal to upkeep quickness and proc  the protection symbol I think?

Protection symbol trait (Protector's Restoration) has 20s cooldown so upping the mantra of solace cooldown to 25s before alacrity / mantra cooldown trait and doubling the heal is basically what I suggested before this nerf happened.

If quickness uptime is the issue then the duration of quickness given by the heal trait should be looked at, but in the meantime people can use mantra of solace not as a heal but as a quickness source. I'm pretty sure why firebrand is dominant has nothing to do with quickness : it's the combination of burning in fractals (highest condition damage of any condition) vs exposed with 100% condition damage bonus, aegis, stability, fury, and not having to remain stationary (as StM chrono). The only thing that could compete with that is condi harbinger (cele/ritualist) or if condi catalyst in cele/seraph/ritualist works (currently benches 33K at best on 50% BD half diviner power quick) and neither can heal well so cele HB still has superior role compression.

If there's two firebrands you aren't running both with quickness so the one that is DPS surely should use a different heal option.

[Vidit.7108]

I'm going preface this first, I run 200 AR, without food and before having quickness I have 1209 healing power. 

My T4 experience since the update so far is mostly the same. As someone that only does the dailies with PUGs it's been my position to never trust the other players, I don't run cele or much dps gear I focus on healing power, boons, and healing. If the encounter I was doing really needed aegis and I could afford to not use one of the better utilities, Advance completely covered my aegis needs. 

I got spooked by one of the encounters yesterday specifically Volcanic which was chaotic more than usual. I don't really know what the counter play to We Bleed Fire is going to be besides even more reflects. It's always been rough to heal Volcanic with We Bleed Fire though even before this nerf. I've said for awhile it's the worst instab and needs to be toned down.

I don't think so far that this change has really hurt the firebrand all that much in the grand scheme of things. If anything it's easier to support with Mirage now that you can more easily cover protection on your own. If you are running HB with all Harrier or a celemix I think that's not going to work well anymore.  Experience is going to matter a lot more, I've seen too many healbrands get by without using tome 3 (or tome 2 even) and now that probably has to change.

[Carnifex.3275]

 

13 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

I am sorry but do you even think before you write? Specs were incredibly broken at launch. For example firebrand and scourge, so disgusting even, that the nerfs were coming fast. And we are comparing now to this level of bs?

Anyway: the free protection and resolution is basically spamable 33% damage reduction for all damage. Take advance as utility since firebrand is pretty flexible anyway and use f3 5 in emergencies. Still plenty of aegis with barely any investment. Now compare that to chrono and we talk again. Not to mention the other specs who cant share aegis at all.

What did i say wrong? Yes i do think before i write. As i said they give you a new shiny toy and by the time new expansion hits they nerf it and give you a new toy instead. Isit so hard to understand? It concerns not only FB but all other classes too. Nerf hammers right before expansions were always common. Why do you think that is?

 

I dont need to compare it to chrono cuz chrono is my main. And u cant compare HFB to chrono, they have different roles. 

 

That classes are broken at the beginning of xpac and crippled at the end of expansion only proves my point that they give u a shiny new toy. Then they take it away and shove you a new one. Except this time the new toy is willbender for guards which is not really shiny at all. Isit impossible for you to see that? 

Edited March 2, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Hotride.2187]

17 hours ago, Dave.6819 said:

Yeah we ran T4 today... holy hell it was stressful. Simple T4s felt like CMs. To those who said "Aegis is not that impactful, protection and resolution is quite good"... yeah. No. It's very impactful. Meta will have to change, we're not touching T4s or T4 CMs with HFB as a solo healer. Anet succeeded in changing the meta. It seems such a minor change .. like simple Aegis removal shouldn't be so impactful. But omg it was totally a different experience, ppl kept wiping even though our HFB was topnotch player.

My group wiped once only on 92, at the imbued fire shaman. They weren't getting out of the last laugh circles and they weren't overall doing enough dps. Rest was the same as usual; I had to rely more on shield/mace but oh well. I was still able to keep 25 stacks of might and perma quickness.

A group with good dps won't even feel the difference for t4+recs. Dunno about CMs, I don't do those.

[Ashreen Destemas.6840]

I REALLY don't like that Aegis has been removed from Mantra of Solace. Imo it was the hallmark of firebrand in open world. FB is slow and it lacks good movement skills (without target). Having Aegis on a short cooldown was one of the FUN points with firebrand. I am deeply disappointed. Maybe it'll become less painfull in the future. Have fun nonetheless.

 

[Kanto.2485]

The brainless mechanics skipping this skill allowed in fractals wasn't good, in PvP it's ridicoulous but i was already playing receive the light since the mantra was already trash so don't care, but what about wvw? why must fb lose self sustain and party sustain there? This change completely forces you into the most passive playstyle possible with mace, receive the light and advance. Makes no sense at all.

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671